Nature Matters: Vital Poems from the Global Majority

by Mona Arshi, Karen McCarthy Woolf

The rise of nature writing as a cultural phenomenon is nothing new. Yet it has stirred questions relating to whose voices are privileged and heard in a space predominantly occupied by Western European traditions and writers.

In Nature Matters, poets Mona Arshi and Karen McCarthy Woolf seek to redress this imbalance. Their genre-defining anthology considers nature poetry from its historical roots to more recent flourishings, presenting how Black and Asian poets of past and present are decolonising this space. Committed to ecological enquiry and formal experiment, it explores fundamental themes such as climate crisis and the Anthropocene; protest and radical empathy; future ecologies; urban nature and the countryside; solitude and alienation. Revitalising conversations surrounding environmentalism and ecopoetics, this new gathering of voices is both urgent and inspirational.

Genres: Poetry

200 pages, Hardcover

Published September 16, 2025

About the author

Mona Arshi worked as a Human rights lawyer at Liberty before she started writing poetry. Her debut collection Small Hands won the Forward Prize for best first collection in 2015. Mona’s second collection ‘Dear Big Gods’ was published in 2019 (both books published by Liverpool University Press’s Pavilion Poetry list). She has taught and mentored extensively including the Arvon/Jerwood mentorship Programme and the Rebecca Swift Women’s Poetry Prize. Mona has judged both the Forward and TS Eliot prizes as well as the National Poetry Competition . She makes regular appearances on radio and has been commissioned to write both poems and short stories. Her poems and interviews have been published in The Times, The Guardian, Granta and The Times of India as well as on the London Underground. She is currently writer in Residence at Cley Marshes with the Norfolk Wildlife Trust. Her debut novel Somebody Loves You will be published with And Other Stories in Autumn 2021. She has recently been appointed Honorary Professor at the University of Liverpool. Mona is currently editing a book of black and Asian poetry ‘Nature Matters’ with Karen McCarthy Woolf which will be published in Spring 2023 by Faber books.

Reviews

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was very impressed with the wide range of poetry in this book. The editors have done a great job of including a variety of English-speaking poets from many different countries and cultures, and featuring diverse voices and poetics. The result is many perspectives on how people connect with the natural world. It contains everything from the epic “Song of Mahogany” by Malika Booker to the intimacy of the commonplace, such as Imtiaz Dharker’s “How to Cut a Pomegranate.” There are poems celebrating the Earth's durability and those expressing the pain of experiencing the careless destruction of life. There’s humor, there’s grief, there’s simplicity, there’s complexity. It highlights the ways we’re indebted to nature for sustenance and enriching experiences, and as well celebrates language and the elasticity of poetic expression.

Nature Matters is divided into four sections: Earth, Air, Water and Fire. It was nice to have some order within the larger theme. In the back, it also has an index of authors and an index of first lines. However there are no poet bios, which is a shame since it had the potential to introduce poets to readers across national boundaries.

So who is this book for? It’s for anyone who enjoys nature poetry. It could be a summer reading book to take to the beach or to a cabin. It would work as a book club book, being ripe for discussion of both the topics and the poetics. It could be a book used in an upper level classroom to show students the different ways poets approach a general theme.

It’s rare for me to give an anthology greater than a 3-star rating because anthologies are by their nature a mixed bag, but this one is a cut above. The editors have managed to keep the mix fascinating, contemporary, and focused on the natural world.

I read this book as an ARC on NetGalley provided by Faber.

[Csenge · Rating 5 out of 5]

(ARC copy)
I was fascinated by this collection for several reasons. One is that it introduced me to a whole lot of poets (from the past 50 years) I have not known before. I was enjoying the sense of recognition with those I knew, and the excitement of discovery for those I want to read more from now. Obviously the goal of the collection was to introduce readers to nature poetry written by global majority poets - but through this lens, it also challenges what qualifies as "nature poetry" and even what qualifies as "nature." The poems had a wide range of styles, forms, and topics; and themes woven through such as identity, immigration, climate crisis, colonialism, etc. There were several that deeply touched me and invited longer contemplation. Others knowingly challenged the reader with text that was disjointed, multilingual, written in dialect, or spliced into other texts (the latter one, Karen McCarthy Woolf's "Horse Chestnut I" was one of my favorites in the book). It would sound like a cliché to say it is a diverse collection, but I don't only mean it by the ethnic identities of the poets. I love reading nature poetry, but I have often felt that some collections I came across presented a very pretty, "poetic", inspiring image of nature. The nature represented in these poems is different. Viscerally connected to humans in all ways good and bad, messy, fascinating, ever-present, meaningful, metaphorical, mythical, personal. It was refreshing to venture beyond admiration into emotional and artistic complexity.

[Rhiley Jade · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley and Faber for the E-ARC! This E-ARC was sent to me in exchange for an honest review!

I very much enjoyed this!
I loved the introduction, it was actually my favorite part of the collection. Please don't skip it when you pick this up.
I loved the representation-It was FULL of BIPOC authors from all over and I adored the diversity.
It was also the perfect read for Earth day that recently passed! All the poems each had their own unique flavor of love for Mother Earth and her heart and hum. I really, really enjoyed this one.

[Lizzy · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exceptional selection of poems, highlighting a diverse rage of poets, on a broad range of ecological subjects.